The reading age of the Cabinet?

The Reading Room

Mr Mustard thinks that a contract of 8,000 pages (+ appendices) which plays with the lives of 500 people should be read by every cabinet member before they vote at their meeting of 6 December. Accordingly he wrote to every Cabinet member, and sent a copy to all councillors, as follows:

Dear Cabinet Members & Mayor

I don't sign anything without reading it first.

It is the Mayor of Barnet's signature* which will actually put in place the NSCSO contract. I do hope that he is going to read it all first and I also hope that you Cabinet members will all do your duty diligently and read the entire thing so that you will be in a position to make an informed decision on my behalf as a council tax payer who will have to pay for any bad judgment that you make.

I need to know if you do or don't read all 8000 pages.

Please let me know how many pages you have read so far (you can express this as 3 lever arch files out of 20 if that is appropriate ).

Please tell me how many you intend to read before 6 December.

I will email you again on 6 December for a final count.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard


* (Note: The Mayor is excused as Mr Mustard now learns that his office goes on the Contract but he doesn't physically sign any longer as it detracts too much from the time needed to plant trees and cut ribbons and he/she really didn't have time to read everything properly in the past.)

Now this was only on Tuesday at 1.30pm and all Cabinet members should currently be locked away on level 7 of Barnet House (where Mr Mustard thinks the only copy of the contract is safely gathering dust untouched by human hand) being made to read the entire document and ask searching questions. Maybe they have been too busy reading to answer Mr Mustard and so to give them a little chivvy up Mr Mustard has decided to post a table of pages read by each Cabinet member and update it as extra information is received.

Here we are now with the officers' decision recommendation having been made on Thursday 22nd and the Cabinet meeting fast approaching on 6 December. How many do we know for certain of the 8,000 pages have been read?

This:

Cabinet member	Pages read
Richard Cornelius	none at all
Andrew Harper	none at all
Dean Cohen	none at all
Robert Rams	none at all
Helena Hart	none at all
Tom Davey	none at all
Daniel Thomas	none at all
Sachin Rajput	none at all
David Longstaff	none at all
Joanna Tambourides	none at all

Not looking good for an informed decision so far is it?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The NSL One Barnet parking contract doesn't work

Deep Purple

Last Friday there was a very interesting case in front of the independent Adjudicator at PATAS. Here is what the adjudicator had to say.

The authority's case is that the Appellant's vehicle was parked with one or more wheels on or over a footpath or any part of a road other than a carriageway when in Prospect Place on 17 May 2012 at 21.56

The Appellant denies the contravention.

I have considered the evidence in this case and whilst photographic evidence is not a mandatory requirement, it is rare for it not to be produced. In this case its absence makes it difficult to resolve the principal dispute in this case.

Further, the map site report appears unrealistic for a parking allegedly on the kerb - the Civil Enforcement Officer has not it appears even drawn a diagram.

Furthermore, a disproportionate amount of time is having to be spent on Barnet cases due to the presentation of its evidence; the purple cards (at least 12) have to be greatly magnified before they can be deciphered.

Finally, considering all the evidence I find that the Appellant's case to be stronger than that of the authority, I am not satisfied that the authority has proved that the Appellant's wheels were on the footway.

The appeal is allowed.

The parking enforcement contract with NSL started on 1 May 2012. Here we are on 23 November 2012 and NSL still have not got their act together. If they can't sort themselves out on a simple contract like parking, a sausage machine operation, then how the heck are Capita going to manage on NSCSO where they have lots of different roles to play.

Are Capita fantastic? Not in Southampton. See this.

It is clear that whilst out-sourcing might cure some problems, you simply get another set in exchange for them. It is not a panacea for all ills. A bit like modern medicines, there are "side effects", which really should be called faults.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

 

Bad news by powerpoint

Now that Mr Mustard is an honorary member of Revs & Bens he gets the briefings that are given to staff. They do not console him one iota. All he wants to know is does he have a job in Barnet or is he to be exiled to Blackburn with Darwen which is the major uncertainty under which he will have to live for months and then be made redundant. His work will suffer as will his health.  Staff Bidder Briefing - Customer Services and Revs and Bens - 221112

Why does the council continue to reply on a graph that has been discredited in order to justify its actions. Is that the best justification there is? a fictional graph full of unsupported assumptions which Mr Reasonable has shown to be a nonsense. 

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Is every Barnet Council parking ticket invalid?

It would appear so. Christmas has come early.

Update September 14 - in a recent PATAS decision of a panel of three adjudicators the wording has now been found to be OK although as ever that decision is not binding on other adjudicators although Mr Mustard expects that other adjudicators will largely follow it. The decision may well be subject to a review and after that go to the High Court. The question is not yet settled.

Mr Mustard was alerted to a recent case at PATAS in which the independent Adjudicator had no hesitation in declaring the PCN / Penalty Charge Notice / parking ticket non-compliant with the relevant Regulations and thus not enforceable i.e. Barnet Council have to cancel it, they simply have no choice. If the council, acting by themselves or via their agent NSL Ltd, do not concede that the wrongly worded PCNs are indeed not compliant then they run the risk of a large number of appeals to PATAS which cost the motorist nothing save a little time and cost the council £46 each time and many man hours. Recent history is that NSL cannot cope with the need to prepare appeal files for PATAS, that many do not get filed, and that the PCN are then cancelled. 

So if you have a parking ticket which, just has below the times during which your vehicle was observed, the words in blue, then you are home and dry for a cancellation.

Pcn Correct and Incorrect Wordings

Now Mr Mustard will save you some time. He has drafted a standard appeal letter which you can download, print out and send off to Worthing. It would be sensible to send this by the "Signed for" service (the former Recorded Delivery) so that no-one can deny that you sent in an appeal (as if a council or its agent would cheat or lie!). 

You can use this letter if you have only just received the parking ticket as well as if you have received the Notice to Owner.

Pcn Appeal Letter 1g 1h Wording

Please do let Mr Mustard know if you Appeal is not accepted and he may well step in to assist as he is becoming well known in the thin client parking section and when Mr Mustard writes what the staff know to be the truth they simply cancel the parking ticket.

There are two questions which come to mind.

1. Having fallen foul of a date error in 2006 which was not in accordance with the then applicable Road Traffic Act 1991, in the infamous Moses case, how have Barnet Council managed to fail to comply with the legislation once again?

2. Given that the parking enforcement contract was awarded to NSL Ltd partly because of their supposed expertise in this area, why have they not noticed the incorrect wording and suggested it be corrected?

So much for One Barnet outsourcing being the end to Barnet Council's problems.

If Mr Mustard has already advised you on an appeal using different grounds, please also send one of these forms in to make sure that your parking ticket does get cancelled.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Feel the love from Mr Mustard !

Love Story

Mr Mustard's new life in Blackburn

Blackburn Town Hall (2008)

Please be so good, dear reader, as to imagine that Mr Mustard works in Revenues and Benefits for Barnet Council, which given his skill set, he could do (senior officers are now in paroxysms of fear) and that if he wants to keep his job, and he needs the money, he has to move to Blackburn where he knows precisely two people and no-one else.

How will Mr Mustard's life change?

Just looking at this week alone Mr Mustard has a language lesson. He has had the same professor of French teaching him for 19 years, who is an expert in how people learn, and she would be very sad to lose one of her oldest and best pupils. Mr Mustard would also be sad.

Mr Mustard has 2 snooker league matches, one for the team which he has been a member of for more than a decade, possibly two, where the members of the team look out for each other and are obviously good friends. So that is 7 friends who it won't be possible to see very often, probably only once a year. The snooker league will need a new treasurer, for Mr Mustard has been filling that position for the last decade, and that will disrupt the smooth running of the league.

Mr Mustard likes French films. He sees these at the Phoenix, the Renoir, The Screen on the Hill, he plans to go to the Everyman very soon and there are other arthouse type cinemas that he has frequented in the past. Film choice in Blackburn will be much reduced to mainstream films.

Mrs Mustard isn't amused. She has a good job as a PA in Docklands. She would probably be able to transfer to a branch of the bank but it will be much less interesting work than in the risk management department and will pay about 50% of what she currently gets. She will have to be prised away from her friends at the bank who like to have an occasional girls' night out and will be 200 miles away from her sister and mnother who she sees every week.

Mr Mustard's motorbike club will be a member short. Sure he can join another one but having just spent an evening in the company of bikers he has known for years it will be a wrench to have to leave them behind.

Mr Mustard has 2 motorbikes. His friend and neighbour also has 2. So that is 4 bikes that they can use flexibly. It isn't everyone you trust with your high powered bikes. That arrangement will take years to establish with someone else if it ever is.

The street will miss the "blogger bus". The spare keys are available to any neighbour (vehicle insured for any driver over 25) to use the van for runs to University (3 different ones in October), to the dump, to move a piano (as it did last Saturday) and so on. In exchange Mr Mustard has access to a selection of cars to borrow. The camaraderie of the street took years to develop and may never be replicated anywhere else.

Mr Mustard is going to the BFI this week (The Man in the White Suit if you were wondering) Is there a branch of the BFI anywhere near Blackburn? Probably not.

Mr Mustard is also a member of an exclusive small dining film club in which each member serves dinner and then a film is screened (no TV at Mr Mustard's but a projector and screen). That will stop. How long will it take him to find new friends in Blackburn with the same interests?

The men of the street try to get to the pub once a month. Mr Mustard will be denied the pleasure of a visit to the newly developed Black Horse and takings at the Nelson will be down and the quiz team will be one member short. Of course there are pubs and quizzes in Blackburn but Mr Mustard likes the company and the beer in the ones he already goes to. Mr Mustard was in a cafe 5 miles away last week when a lady said "I know you, don't I" and she turned out to be a regular in one of the other teams. Barnet is such a small world sometimes.

Mr Mustard has spent 3 years getting the allotment he shares with 2 friends into shape. Here is the tree that had to cleared off the old one along with 2m high wall to wall brambles.

It took years to get this plot. They tend to be in short supply everywhere. Will he get another plot inside 5 years in Blackburn? Will it be in a right state and take 2 years to sort out? Maybe a kind reader in Blackburn could enlighten him.

Mr Mustard doesn't have children but he is familiar with the school run as he has done it, and is listed on the appropriate forms, for collecting friends' children from the school if the parents can't or if they have to come home in the middle of the day. That is 3 families who will need to find another helper. Mr Mustard's avatar was drawn by Fred aged 8 for whom Mr Mustard is occasionally the child-sitter. Young Fred is marvellous and corrects his mother when she arranges a baby-sitter pointing out that he isn't a baby anymore.

Mr Mustard takes motorcyling holidays in France. Moving to Blackburn will add 200 miles and 4 hours each way onto the journey and mean that the 4 day trips he currently goes on for short breaks will probably have to be 5 to make them worthwhile.

If he moved to Blackburn he would be one of only a handful of people who stick with Capita and he would be paid £25,000 a year and new staff will get £16,000. Will that make him popular with the new staff when the information inevitably leaks?

There are many other aspects to Mr Mustard's life that would also have to change and hundreds of other people and businesses would be adversely affected. He would need a new doctor, a new dentist (hard to find on the NHS at present) a new home etc etc. What a palaver.

Think about this Cabinet councillors. You are just thinking of the grubby financial aspects of the contract and not at all of people's lives, feelings, finances. Staff are not a commodity to be bought and sold. Many of them will have worked for 5, 10 or 20 years for the council. Has their loyalty been mis-placed?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The Friday Joke - Redundant - we have a screensaver for that!

Communicating with staff by email is a really blunt way of doing so. Much better to talk to everyone in small groups.

From: First Team
Sent: 23 November 2012 17:11
To: AllStaff
Subject: Weekly message from the Deputy Chief Executive

This week has obviously been dominated by the news of Capita being named as the officer recommendation for the NSCSO contract.

The announcement of the details and of the business case has surprised people in two ways. Externally observers seem taken aback by the scale of the savings the council will receive - £125 million over the lifetime of the contract with an extra £8 million investment in the service as the contract starts.

Internally staff affected have undoubtedly been surprised by the rapid scale and pace of transformation.

The two are obviously connected.

197 posts could leave the borough for other towns in England and Northern Ireland by December 2013. For people with a partner working in London and children in London schools, the thought of upping sticks and moving to the north of England is probably unappealing. But it is important for those of you affected that you shouldn't immediately think the only alternative is redundancy.

Capita, if they are confirmed as our partners, are a large organisation with 50,000 staff and they will be committed to finding alternative roles within the company for NSCSO staff wherever possible.

In the meantime, screensavers and posters advertise the range of support available for anyone who would like to take it up, both in relation to NSCSO and budget savings.

Andrew (Black Hole Travers)

Please define "unappealing" in the comment box below.

The council treat employees as a commodity and don't give a tinker's cuss for their lives and feelings. They disgust Mr Mustard.

This Friday joke isn't, of course, at all funny.

Update 11:47

An open apology to Mr Travers

Apostrophes cause so much trouble. In this case the message, sent to me by several sources unfortunately came in an incorrect version first and a correct version later. When changing from one email format to another the apostrophe often turns into a comma and my informant tidied up the email and accidentally deleted the end of the word "shouldn't". I am sorry that an incorrect version was published (see Brian, look how quick and easy an email can be!).

Yours contritely

Mr Mustard